Two years earlier, a natural gas explosion lifted a house off its foundation on W. Florida St. The occupant of that home survived the blast.

In November 2001, a mother of three had signed a lease but not yet moved into a home on W. Columbia St. when that home was leveled in an explosion.

A further dive into the Courier & Press archives reveals a surprising number of other explosions.

January of 1991 capped off a seven-month period in which Evansville saw four explosions. A home at 2804 Grove St. exploded sending sparks 100 feet in the air according to a Courier & Press report that appeared January 27.

The string of explosions began in July 1990 when an explosion on Jefferson Ave. burned a house in an incident firefighters said looked "suspicious." Just six days later, a home on Outer Lincoln Dr. also exploded. No one was injured in any of those explosions, or the gas explosion that followed in mid-August in a century-old home near Haynie's Corner.

A pipe bomb left in the trunk of a parked car on E. Columbia St. exploded in the early morning hours of September 14, 1988, but the car's drained gas tank limited the damage to the vehicle and surrounding properties.

The Royal Inn at 1901 N. U.S. 41, then known as the Greer Motel, was heavily damaged March 21, 1988 when a man attempting to take his own life sealed the vents in his room, disconnected the gas line from his room's heater, and then struck a match, blowing out the room's front wall. The man left a note to his girlfriend that appeared to investigators to be a suicide note and was facing charges at the time stemming from alleged drunken driving and habitual traffic offenses. The man was not severely injured in the blast.

An anonymous tip in September 1987 led police to stake out a home North of Evansville. Police caught two men running from the house, which exploded while police were apprehending the men. The two were charged respectively with arson for hire, and conspiracy to commit arson, both felonies.

A year earlier, in 1986, a man attempting to dispose of a homemade grenade was killed when the grenade accidentally exploded. In addition to other unexploded grenades found in the man's truck, police also searched a storage unit the man owned and discovered a cache of explosives, including 160 sticks of dynamite and additional explosives and fuses.

The worst incident appears to have been a February 17, 1958 explosion of a furnace that killed five and injured two more on E. Columbia St. Coverage from that evening's Evansville Press indicates that the survivors had been blown clear of the house when the blast occurred. Cold temperatures wreaked havoc with firefighters attempting to tame the blaze, and school was cancelled that day at Delaware Elementary as the disruption in gas service meant the school's heat was inoperable.